I pray through to Vic-tray, with Phil's hand on my butt

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church,  most church services ended with an altar call: an invitation (or exhortation) to come down to the front of the sanctuary, kneel at the long, low wooden rail, and Pray Through to Victory (all preachers had a Southern accent, so they said "Victray). 

 It was similar to Catholic confession, with no priest: you asked God to forgive all the sins you could think of, and if He decided to, you became a Christian or got saved (from an eternity in hell).

Praying through to Victray  wasn't easy -- you had to work, sobbing and begging and moaning, for at least ten minutes, sometimes more.  And afterwards, the most trivial of sins -- an angry word, a lustful thought, a glance at the Sunday newspaper -- would negate your salvation, so you'd have to start all over again.  It was not unusual to go down several times a year, and some especially sensitive types went down at almost every service.

Usually just adults went down -- kids were excused, and teens had regular invitations to "bow your head right here and ask God to forgive you" in Sunday School (just before the morning service) and NYPS (just before the evening service), so we were usually saved by the time the altar call came around.

But in ninth grade, the first year that I was officially a teenager, I discovered a benefit to going down to the altar (other than the not going to hell thing).

Praying Through  was such hard work that you needed someone by your side, entreating God on your behalf.  So whenever you went to the altar, Christians of the same sex rushed down to help.  Two, three, or even more, depending on your popularity. 

They pressed against you, hugging and holding, arms around waists and shoulders, even pressed on your butt as if trying to push you into heaven, and when you successfully Prayed Through, you became a single mass, bear-hugging and back-slapping and pressing together.  During those moments, I felt a lifetime's worth of hard muscle, and sometimes even private parts pressed surreptitiously against me.

Going down to the altar allowed me to get hugged, held, and caressed by the preacher, the preacher's son, my Sunday school teacher  and lots of other cute boys and men.

And the next service, if I was still saved, I had carte blanche to go down and touch, hold, hug, and fondle any guy I liked.

The full story is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends 

I Meet the Nazarene Teen Idol

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we had a "revival": a full week of screeching, foot-stomping, Bible-thumping sermons by an evangelist who made his living going from revival to revival, getting people saved and sanctified.

You were encouraged to bring your friends who went to other churches, and thus might not be amenable to visiting on a Sunday morning.  But on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, they were free, right?

We did get a few converts during every revival, but not nearly enough for the evangelist, who stomped and shouted with more and more urgency as the week wore on and nearly everyone who needed to get saved was already saved and only a few people went down. Or no one.

The only bright spot of the whole ordeal was the gospel group that accompanied the evangelist. During the fall revival in my junior year in high school, the evangelist was the young, muscular but bellowing Brother Jonathan, and the musical group was the Smith Family (not to be confused with the punk rock group the Smiths, which I have several times).

They sang fast, upbeat songs which I assumed they wrote -- there were records for sale in the lobby.  Church oldsters used to old Salvation Army-style ballads like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were scandalized by their country-inflected lyrics, not to mention their guitars, drums, and tambourines.  One of their songs goes through my head intermittently to this day:

I've got confidence, God is going to see me through
Whatever the case may be, I know He's gonna fix it for me.

(I just discovered that "I've Got Confidence" was not a Smith Family original: it was composed by Andre Crouch and popularized by Elvis Presley.)

I haven't been able to find any photos -- too much interference from other Smiths on the internet -- but they looked something like this: middle-aged husband and young-adult daughter as the lead singers (baritone and soprano), teenage son on the guitar, preteen son on the drums, and wife on the tambourine, piano, or organ.

 Scott, the teenage son, was a year younger than me, tall and buffed with big hands, a round face, short blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes.  The Nazarene equivalent of a teen idol, our own Shaun Cassidy!  I was desperate to become his friend, or at least feel a warm strong handshake, but I didn't have a chance.  He was mobbed.

Girls were swooning, batting their eyes at him, writing him love notes under the guise of prayer requests.  Old people (anyone over 30) were pushing to tell him what a "fine Christian boy" he was and getting him to autograph any piece of paper they could find, even the "notes" page of their study Bibles.  Boys were rushing to kneel at the altar in the hopes that Scott would come down from the podium and put his arm around them as they moaned and cried and "prayed through to victory."

Unfortunately, I couldn't join them at the altar, because I had made a major tactical error.  You could go down only to get saved (forgiven of the sins you had committed), sanctified (made holy, so you would be incapable of future sins), or to help someone else pray through.   And, not knowing that Scott would be there, I got sanctified just a few weeks ago!

Going down again so soon would be admitting that I had never been sanctified at all -- that I had been deceived by Satan into rising from the altar without praying through. Or that I was lying to get the praise and prestige.  A major faux pas. a major humiliation!

The full post is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

I Learn How to Cruise in the Nazarene Church

I feel torn about growing up in the Nazarene Church. 

There were a lot of rules no movies, dancing, theater, carnivals, circuses, rock music, secular literature, or shopping on Sunday -- but there were lots of ways of sneaking around them.  Life was quite interesting, one caper after another.

The three hour-long fire-and-brimstone sermons every week were tedious --God hates everybody and everything, I get it -- but the altar calls were fun. Nothing beats the adrenaline rush of "praying through to victory" while half a dozen cute men and boys are hugging and touching you.



It was gratifying to realize that only Nazarenes, out of all the hundreds of religions and Christian denominations in the world, got it right, knew how to avoid going to hell for all eternity.  But it was also a big responsibility: you had to win souls. Your family (if they were unsaved), your classmates, strangers on the street.

In high school soulwinning class, we learned that there were five main techniques, ranked from least to most difficult:

1.  Just be cheerful. Smile.  Say "Isn't it a beautiful day?"  Sinners are miserable all the time, so they will eventually beome curious and ask: "Why are you so happy all the time, when the rest of us are so miserable?"

"Well, that's because I'm saved."

"Really? How could I get saved, too?"

I don't care what our soulwinning coach said, that conversation never actually happened in real life.

2. Invite them to church.   Preferably to the evening service, when there's more likely to be an altar call.  We got points and prizes for contacting prospects -- people who had attended Sunday school or church and then dropped out.  Sometimes they just attended once.

3. Witness.  Inform the sinner that you are saved, and let them make the first move:

"Sorry, I can't go to the Breaking the Ten Commandments party this weekend because I'm saved." 

"Really? How could I get saved, too?"

That conversation never happened in real life, either.

4. The Soul Winning Conversation. This was the most difficult, and therefore the most prestigious.  Walk up to a stranger, start a conversation, and win their soul right there on the spot. 

The "mark" should be about your age, and of the same sex (coach didn't explain why).  He should be alone, not in a group.  He should be in situation where he won't have to leave right away, say studying in the library or eating in a restaurant.

Start the conversation by finding a topic of common interest.  Then encourage him to talk about himself.  Eventually he will mention being miserable, like all sinners are all the time, and you can say something like "What if I told you you could be happy all the time?"

Boom! Pull out your Bible.  If he doesn't run away, you've got him!

Actually, that never worked, either, but through high school I had carte blanche to approach any cute boy I wanted, just by saying that I wanted to win his soul.

And when I started cruising -- meeting guys in gay bars, or in gay neighborhoods anywhere -- I found the soulwinning techniques invaluable.

1. Someone who is alone, not in a group, and in a situation where he won't leave right away.

2. Start with a topic of common interest.

3. Encourage him to talk about himself.

4. Eventually he will let you know that he is interested in sex, or a date, or both.

5. Boom!  Pull out your phone number, or your penis, or both.

20 Nazarene Bulges, Boners, and Sausage Sightings

I spent the first 20 or so years of my life in the Church of the Nazarene, a hardcore fundamentalist church that was against everything, from rock music to Roman Catholics to wearing short pants. AND required us to go to church three times a week, carry a Bible everywhere, pray before meals (even in the school cafeteria) and try to win the souls of our friends, classmates, and perfect strangers.

Shudder.

I complain endlessly about the draconian rules; the utter absence of art and literature; the tedium of Sunday school class; the preacher screaming about God's hatred three times a week; .  But I also remember having a lot of fun. Finding loopholes in the rules, or ways to ignore them altogether, was a never-ending game.  Protesting worldly evil was exciting.

And the homoerotic activity was constant.  There was as much, or more, hugging and fondling going on as in any gay bar in the world.

Here are 20 Nazarene grabs, gropes, bulges, boners, and sausage sightings, plus a few guys that I just crushed on.

Elementary School

1.No Divorce.     They told me incessantly that my destiny was to marry a girl.  But Brother Hanson married a girl and then got out of it through a "divorce."  Of course, he couldn't be Minister of Music afterwards, but that was a small price to pay for the freedom to live with a boy.

2. No Movies.  We weren't supposed to even set foot inside a movie theater.  But when a cute boy named Gary invited me to a movie, I had to make a choice.  The first of many spiritual crises in my childhood.

3. Gospel Singers.  Sometimes we had guest singers, usually all-male groups that pretended to be brothers, lest anyone suspect.  When the  Sanderson Brothers became our summer camp counselors, I found an ingenious way to get a Sausage Sighting.

Junior High

4. No Premarital Kissing.  Or sex, either.  This was fine with me, but it left the question of what sex involves.  One year at Manville Camp, an older boy named Marty was happy to demonstrate.  Definite bulge, maybe a boner.

5. No Dancing.  Not even in physical education class or "in the guise of folk dancing."  Except at Washington Junior High, we had a required dance every Friday afternoon.  In eighth grade, I convinced a black-haired 7th grader named Brett to dance with me and psych out the teachers.

6. No Evolution.    The Bible Missionaries were even more conservative than Nazarenes, and thought of us as heretical libertines.  I thought it was quite a coups when Micah the Bible Missionary Boy accepted an invitation to my house to fight a common enemy, "evil-lution."

7. Summer Camp.  A week every summer of deadly-dull Bible studies, sports, and endless screaming sermons.  But when our junior high Sunday school teacher, Brother Dino, became our counselor one year, I saw him naked in the shower.  Major Sausage Sighting.

8. The Prospect List.  People who came to Sunday school or church, even once, were put on a special list.  We were supposed to call, write, or visit them regularly to invite them back and try to win their souls. It rarely worked, but one summer I managed to befriend Frank, a boy my age who went to the Catholic school.

9. Olivet.  If we went to college at all, it had to be Olivet, the Nazarene college on the prairie, where all of the boys were training to be ministers, and all of the girls, to be their wives.  While we were visiting during a prospective student weekend, a ministerial student named Rick, kissing his girlfriend on a couch on the other side of the room, became obviously aroused.

10. The Altar Call.  At the end of most services, the preacher invited those who needed to "get right with God" to come down to the altar and kneel, whereupon members of the same sex would grab, hug, and hold them to help them "pray through to victory."  I got a lot of hugging, groping, and bulge-viewing that way, but I especially wanted Phil, the President of the Youth Society, the cutest and coolest boy I ever met.  But he never went down.  I had to get him to sin, so he would go.

High School

11. Vacation.  You weren't excused from church just because you were on vacation, even though casual visitors were often mobbed by wannabe soulwinners.  One summer in Minnesota, I got on my knees in a cute boy's bedroom.

12. Preacher's Kids.  When you grow up in a fishbowl, scrutinized and judged by the entire congregation, you typically turn into a teenage wild child, staying out late, breaking all the Nazarene rules, and leaving a score of romantic conquests in your wake.  So when I asked out Verne, the Preacher's Son, I was shocked that he accepted.

13. The International Institute.  Every four years, an International Institute was held for select Nazarene youth, to teach us how to win souls for Christ worldwide.  There was very limited sightseeing, but I managed to sneak out of the dorm, go to a bar, and dance with a Swedish leatherboy, breaking eight rules at once.

14.Soulwinning.  Getting strangers to accept Jesus Christ as their Personal Savior was easier in theory than in practice.  I was too nervous to try most of the time, and when I did try, with the gay waiter at Olivet,  he had heard the spiel a hundred times before. And I didn't even get to see his bulge.

15. Afterglow.  After the Sunday evening service, the Nazarene Young People's Society held a special party called "Afterglow."   It was supposed to be a soulwinning device: kids who would never accept an invitation to church might come to a party.  If they didn't mind sodas, snacks, and stupid party games.  Few outsiders came, except one night, Danny, a very muscular boy with a leg brace, who I remembered from Denkmann years before.


College

16.The Jump Quiz was the Nazarene sport of Bibles and butts.  The object was to get your butt off your chair fast enough to answer a Bible question.  I didn't have a very good record, but when I was a freshman in college, the preacher asked me to be the Jump Quiz Coach.  I had to coach a whole teamful of cute guys.

17. Missionaries.  During the summer after my freshman year, the church asked for volunteers to build a new Nazarene church in Colombia.  I had dropped out by that time, but I wasn't going to turn down a free trip to Colombia.   And I met Marco the Gay Cannibal.

Recent

18. The Alabaster Box.   Nazarenes were expected to give 10% of their pre-tax income, minimum, as a "tithe." Additional offerings often took up another 10%.  Plus you kept an Alabaster Box on your shelf for spare change. Brother Byron, the Church Treasurer, was responsible for accumulating and calculating the money.  And, years after I left the church, I dropped in to find out why he never married.

19. Catholics.  Nazarenes hated Catholics.  Innately evil, brainwashed idolators who would kill you as soon as look at you.  So how did the family react when my niece married a Catholic guy?  How about one who had a beard and tattoos, rode a motorcycle, played a guitar, and had the biggest bulge I ever saw?

20. The Church Organist.  We sang all the time in the church, mostly dour funereal hymns from the Victorian era, accompanied by either a piano or an organ -- all other musical instruments were suspect, or downright Satanic.  The Minister of Music was always male, but the pianist and organist were always female.  Any boy who expressed an interest in becoming a church organist was ridiculed.  Even the preacher's son.